Your Hosts, Paul and Babe.
Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox are our official Hosts here at the Trees of Mystery. Paul has been with us pretty much since the begining. He's 49 feet 2 inches tall on a cold day. (3/4 of an inch taller on a warm day.) Paul greets you with a wave and a wink, and he's known far and wide for being a great talker. He'll talk your arm off if you let him! If I had a nickel for every word that came out of Paul's mouth, I'd be as rich as Pecos Bill! Babe, on the other hand, is more of the strong and silent type. And he's got heaps of both of those! Babe stands 35 feet tall in his bare hooves and tail. Paul and Babe together with their ballast weigh in at 860,000 pounds. That's as much as ten fully loaded lumber trucks. Oh yeah, in case you was wondering, Paul's ax is 25 feet long. It's a double-bitted chopping ax and back in Paul's heyday he could put 25 million board feet a day on the ground with it. But Paul hasn't been logging for a few years now, he says he wants to make sure there's enough timber around for people to look at and for all the critters out there in the forest to have a place to live. Said he's sort of semi-retired until the country needs him again. My goodness, I just realized that probably has something to do with all the stories he tells. He's bored! (But never boring.)
The present Paul Bunyan showed up the year before the Seattle Worlds Fair, which was in the early sixties. Might be that he knew if he stood here in our lot, he'd get to talk to lots and lots of people on their way to the fair! The present Babe has been here since 1949. At one time, Babe's head nodded and smoke blew out his nostrils. The smoke scared the heck out of small children, so that was discontinued. The head movement is inoperable due to bracing installed when he was moved in 1983 to make room for the new End of the Trail Museum. Near future plans call for removing the bracing so his head can move again, as well as adding several oxen-like sound capabilities. If you are familiar with oxen, you might notice some additions that a normal oxen does not have. That's because the fellow who originally put Babe together (Thompson family patriarch, Ray Thompson) was fresh from the city when he built Babe from a kit. He subsequently lived out here in the wilds of far Northern California long enough to assimilate the knowledge that every country kid gets by age 8, rued his urban ways, and was no longer considered "city". Even so, it was decided that, since poor old Babe had suffered enough what with turning blue from that storm and all, he should be left just as he was built, even if he's not anatomically correct for an ox... ( Also, happens to be a very popular photo-op)
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- Trees of Mystery
- 15500 US Highway 101 N
Klamath, California 95548
1-800-638-3389